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August 25, 2016

Action Plans at the University of York

By Michelle Blake, Head of Relationship ManagementWhen we restructured our Relationship Management Team (RMT) at the University of York in January 2014 it was with an aim to allow staff to develop expertise across three main areas (rather than to try to be expert across all 3): relationship building, research support services, and teaching and learning. One of our overall aims was to strengthen relationships with staff and students across the university by understanding and engaging in the new research and teaching environment, and providing appropriate and targeted services and support.

Liaison is one of our key functions and our structure allows our liaison librarians to have the time to focus on building meaningful relationships with academic departments, notably through the academic staff themselves, with an aim of reaching and influencing students through them. At the same time we introduced this model we developed annual library action plans.

The purpose of our Action Plans are:

to help make explicit the investment, usage and purpose of the Library to each department

to help to focus the work that needs to take place with each department to address issues or improve current service

provide an opportunity to discuss priorities with department and build/maintain relationship

function as a partnership document between the Library and each academic department

act as a workplan (forms much of Liaison Librarian objectives for the year)

act as evidence for departmental planning processes

Ned’s post describes some of the sources of information we use and shows what our plans in 2015 looked like. Below you can also view our template for 2016.York Action Plan 2016 Template

We’ve found it’s crucial to have buy-in and input from the top in each department to make the Action Plans work. The Action Plans act as the basis for a meeting which takes place with key members of the academic department - notably the Head of Department and the academic Library Representative - and the Library - the Academic Liaison Librarian and the Head of Relationship Management or the Academic Liaison Manager. Where it hasn’t been possible for the Head of Department to attend we have someone else in key position in the department e.g. Deputy Head, Chair of Board of Studies. The Academic Liaison Librarian leads the meeting and it allows all draft actions to be discussed. After the meeting the finalised action plan is produced and sent to department and they choose how to disseminate it within their own department.

We have been fortunate in getting all departments on board. The first year we scheduled action plan meetings, all but one department met with us. The second year we had meetings with all departments. Departments see the value of the meeting as we develop shared priorities for partnership working. We have honest and open conversations about the issues in each department and most are realistic about the limits of what we can do. This approach has resulted in even closer working relationships and a more detailed understanding of how departments work (and the nuances between them). Our engagement efforts are becoming more meaningful and we are viewed as a trusted partner. We are able to tailor our communications with departments as we have insight into what will work with each of them.

After all action plan meetings have taken place analysis is conducted to identify the key themes and identify which departments we need to work with in these areas and where there is commonality to work across a group of departments rather than duplicating effort.

We are realistic in how many initiatives we can undertake with any one department and ensure that no one liaison librarian (they are each responsible for 3-4 departments) is involved in too many initiatives. Priorities are then discussed with the rest of the senior managers to establish what work will take place and likely timescales as part of our larger planning discussions.

Finally in order to ensure liaison librarians can keep track of their actions (and everyone else across the wider library service knows what is happening) we have developed a centralised spreadsheet of actions where updates can be added. In addition, we have developed our own customer relationship management (CRM) database where all our interactions with departments are captured so we have a holistic picture of what activity is taking place across all departments. A future blog post will look specifically at our CRM.